FEN InEEd-DC

 

“Integrated Coupling of Energy Carriers for Grid-Coupled Customer Supply with a Focus on Mobility and DC Applications” is a project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the scope of the Forschungscampus Elektrische Netze (FEN). The project started in 2020 and has a period of five years.

 

Sustainable decarbonization of the energy sector for climate change mitigation may be achieved by replacing fossil energy sources through the use of novel technologies for the exploitation of all available energy sources, the upgrade of energy conversion and the involvement of prosumers and end users. The new decentralized power system is complex, its operation is challenging, and the economic efficiency of technologies depends on their interconnection and applications. This evokes the need for special tools for holistic observations of this new energy system to support business decision, to identify boundary conditions for urban planning and to discover new possibilities, which are currently lacking.

Within the scope of InEEd-DC, E.ON SE and Kiepe Electric cooperate with the RWTH institutes PGS, EBC and ACS to develop a framework for the modelling and coupling of prosumers and energy districts, filling that gap. Basic models from the first phase of the FEN project will be extended and DC-technologies, especially in the mobility sector, will be structured in modules.

 

The project pursues the following goals:

• Development (and publishing) of mathematical optimization models for planning and conception of individual prosumers and coupled districts
• Creating a tool for a holistic analysis of sector coupling, including the research of different pro- and consumer classes and the interdependencies of multisectoral coupled districts
• Analysis of the optimal and most economical technologies for coupled energy flows
• Introduction of DC-based technologies and innovative networking possibilities as an alternative to present distribution grids and the analysis and evaluation of different mobility concepts
• Scalable solutions for an efficient simulation of the modeled components and concepts

The sector coupling is modeled in 3-stages: first the individual prosumers, such as buildings, electric vehicles, industry processes, second urban districts, as compositions of the individual prosumers with central batteries, and heat & gas storages, third the urban districts, combined to conurbations. These large-scale models are eventually analyzed and verified.

 

The Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems (ACS) will mainly contribute to the development of suitable approaches and algorithms for the reduction of model complexity and the acceleration of required calculations. To this aim, in parallel to the implementation of the model, a continuous analysis of the system complexity is necessary. Interfaces as well as the simulation environment itself are defined and implemented. Thereby, the increasing complexity of multi-energy systems with a large number and variety of prosumers and models will be tackled to ensure a scalable and efficient simulation.

 

Grateful acknowledgement is made to BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) for providing financial support under the grant agreement no. 03SF0597.